During the years 1907-9 this study first took shape, being then based mainly on literary sources; and during the latter year it was successfully presented to the Faculty of Letters of the University of Rennes, Brittany, for the Degree of Docteur-ès-Lettres . Since then I have re-investigated the whole problem of the Celtic belief in Fairies, and have collected very much fresh material. Two years ago the scope of my original research was limited to the four chief Celtic countries, but now it incl

‘I have told what I have seen, what I have thought, and what I have learned by inquiry.’— Herodotus. I. The Religious Nature of the Fairy-Faith There is probably no other place in Celtic lands more congenial, or more inspiring for the writing down of one’s deeper intuitions about the Fairy-Faith, than Carnac, under the shadow of the pagan tumulus and mount of the sacred fire, now dedicated by triumphant Christianity to the Archangel Michael. The very name of Carnac is significant; [1] and in two

‘In the Beauty of the World lies the ultimate redemption of our mortality. When we shall become at one with nature in a sense profounder even than the poetic imaginings of most of us, we shall understand what now we fail to discern.’— Fiona Macleod . Psychical interpretation—The mysticism of Erin and Armorica—In Ireland—In Scotland—In the Isle of Man—In Wales—In Cornwall—In Brittany. As a preliminary to our study it is important, as we shall see later, to give some attention to the influences an

‘During all these centuries the Celt has kept in his heart some affinity with the mighty beings ruling in the Unseen, once so evident to the heroic races who preceded him. His legends and faery tales have connected his soul with the inner lives of air and water and earth, and they in turn have kept his heart sweet with hidden influence.’—A. E. Method of presentation—The logical verdict—Trustworthiness of legends—The Fairy-Faith held by the highly educated Celt as well as by the Celtic peasant—Th

Anthropology is concerned with man and what is in man— humani nihil a se alienum putat .— Andrew Lang. The Celtic Fairy-Faith as part of a World-wide Animism—Shaping Influence of Social Psychology—Smallness of Elvish Spirits and Fairies, according to Ethnology, Animism, and Occult Sciences—The Changeling Belief and its explanation according to the Kidnap, Human-Sacrifice, Soul-Wandering, and Demon-Possession Theory—Ancient and Modern Magic and Witchcraft shown to be based on definite psychologic

‘So firm was the hold which the ethnic gods of Ireland had taken upon the imagination and spiritual sensibilities of our ancestors that even the monks and christianized bards never thought of denying them. They doubtless forbade the people to worship them, but to root out the belief in their existence was so impossible that they could not even dispossess their own minds of the conviction that the gods were real supernatural beings.’— Standish O’Grady. The Goddess Dana and the modern cult of St.

‘On the one hand we have the man Arthur, whose position we have tried to define, and on the other a greater Arthur, a more colossal figure, of which we have, so to speak, but a torso rescued from the wreck of the Celtic pantheon.’—The Right Hon. Sir John Rhŷs . The god Arthur and the hero Arthur—Sevenfold evidence to show Arthur as an incarnate fairy king—Lancelot the foster-son of a fairy woman—Galahad the offspring of Lancelot and the fairy woman Elayne—Arthur as a fairy king in Kulhwch and Ol

‘In Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far apart.’— W. B. Yeats. ‘Many go to the Tir-na-nog in sleep, and some are said to have remained there, and only a vacant form is left behind without the light in the eyes which marks the presence of a soul.’—A. E. General ideas of the Otherworld: its location; its subjectivity; its names; its extent; Tethra one of its kings—The Silver Branch and the Golden Bough; and Initiations—The Otherworld the Heaven-World of all religions—V

‘It seems as if Ossian’s was a premature return. To-day he might find comrades come back from Tir-na-nog for the uplifting of their race. Perhaps to many a young spirit standing up among us Cailte might speak as to Mongan, saying: “I was with thee, with Finn.”’—A. E. The question remaining, Would the classical or oriental doctrines of re-birth have originated or fundamentally shaped the Celtic re-birth doctrine? is a very difficult one. At present it cannot be answered with certainty either nega

‘As he spoke, he paused before a great mound grown over with trees, and around it silver clear in the moonlight were immense stones piled, the remains of an original circle, and there was a dark, low, narrow entrance leading therein. “This was my palace. In days past many a one plucked here the purple flower of magic and the fruit of the tree of life....” And even as he spoke, a light began to glow and to pervade the cave, and to obliterate the stone walls and the antique hieroglyphics engraven

‘The cult of forests, of fountains, and of stones is to be explained by that primitive naturalism which all the Church Councils held in Brittany united to proscribe.’— Ernest Renan. Edicts against pagan cults—Cult of Sacred Waters and its absorption by Christianity—Celtic Water Divinities—Druidic influence on Fairy-Faith—Cult of Sacred Trees—Cult of Fairies, Spirits, and the Dead—Feasts of the Dead—Conclusion. The evidence of paganism in support of our Psychological Theory concerning the Fairy-F

‘The Purgatory of St. Patrick became the framework of another series of tales, embodying the Celtic ideas concerning the other life and its different states. Perhaps the profoundest instinct of the Celtic peoples is their desire to penetrate the unknown. With the sea before them, they wish to know what is to be found beyond it; they dream of the Promised Land. In the face of the unknown that lies beyond the tomb, they dream of that great journey which the pen of Dante has celebrated.’— Ernest Re

‘Puzzling and weird occurrences have been vouched for among all nations and in every age. It is possible to relegate a good many asserted occurrences to the domain of superstition, but it is not possible thus to eliminate all.’— Sir Oliver Lodge. Method of Examination: Exoteric and Esoteric Aspects—The X-quantity—Scientific Attitudes toward the Animistic Hypothesis: Materialistic Theory; Pathological Theory; Delusion and Imposture Theory—Problems of Consciousness: Dreams; Supernormal Lapse of Ti

‘If all things which partook of life were to die, and after they were dead remained in the form of death, and did not come to life again, all would at last die, and nothing would be alive—what other result could there be?’— Socrates , as reported by Plato. ‘The soul, if immortal, existed before our birth. What is incorruptible must be ungenerable.’— Hume. ‘If there be no reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our existence apparently commences, then there are no grou